Daily Reviews Summary 06/09/09

Dual SIM mobile phones have been a bit of a trend in Japan and Korea for quite some time, and now the first dual-SIM smartphone has hit our shores in the shape of the Acer DX900. The DX900 is a re-branded E-TEN DX900, and the first device to come available in the UK, pipping the X960 to the post.

While many of us will not be able to afford a decked out case with liquid cooling built in, some just cant help but haveing the best. This case is certainly unrivaled in one area, rad space. While the Thermaltake Sword M has a built in rad, the X10 Liquid has twin rads, with four 80mm fans on each. This is right inbetween a triple and quad 120mm radiator. As anyone with a triple rad knows, it blows off a lot of heat. These rads should be the same, and may even have an advantage. According to Ikonik these rads are of hihger quality, similar to what is used on car radiators.

Will all of this bundled together prove to be a good combo, or will it fail misterably? For those of us who can afford a case like this, or those who love to marvel at the best, read on!

While some Blade series kits are geared toward the extreme overclocker, the kit reviewed is intended more for the user who wants tight timings at easily attainable speeds. There aren't too many 6GB kits offering memory that runs at 1600MHz and 6-6-6-24 (1T) timings, so this OCZ Technology Blade kit is unique in that regard.

For gamers looking to be totally immersed in their game, the G35 contains just the right mix of performance and features. The headset is easy to use and the magic of 7.1 surround sound with a top notch noise cancelling microphone creates an aural experience most gamers will only have dreamed of. Besides the price, which is probably too rich for most, the only criticisms are that there is no standard 3.5mm plug (you're tied to USB) and 370g is probably a touch too heavy for longer gaming sessions. The headset doesn't do a great job of containing sounds either, so if you're playing in your living room you can expect a tap on the shoulder to turn it down. Besides these niggles, this is the headset of choice for hardcore gamers. As long as you don't expect audio quality to be as good as a high-end pair of headphones, nor use the headset a replacement to a proper surround sound system, you won't be disappointed.

PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W PSU ReviewTech-Reviews.co.uk posted a review on the PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W PSU

Recently we reviewed the Turbo Cool from PC Power and Cooling which entailed very impressive performance results. Fortunately, PC Power and Cooling have sent us another one of their PSU's to take a look at: the Silencer 750 Watt. Let's take a look and see if this power supply performs as well as the other ones in our roundup.

It wasn't so long ago that projectors were large devices that were very expensive to purchase. Anyone who traveled with a projector knows how bulky they could be. Today we are going to look at the new and very compact BenQ Joybee GP1 Mini Projector. The little projector is considerably smaller than many of the projectors on the market. How well does it work? Read on to find out.

Gigabyte supports AMD Socket AM3 processors with their latest and greatest motherboard in the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P. This board supports DDR3 memory and sports the 790FX/SB750 combination of chipsets. Is this the board you have been looking for as you build that new AMD socket AM3 system? Take a look and see how it performs!

As you already know, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 employs two RV770 GPUs, each of which is complemented by 1GB of GDDR5 memory (for a total of 2GB frame buffer memory). The reference GPU clock speed for the 4870 X2 is 750 MHz, and the reference memory speed is 900 MHz. Diamond, however, boosted the XOC's clocks to 800 MHz and 950 MHz, respectively, making this one of the fastest 4870 X2 cards on the market. Head on over to the site and check it out...

Rosewill may be an unfamiliar name to many of you, especially for those outside the United States where their presence is still basically unknown. They are however a subsidiary of NewEgg, one of largest online computer hardware retailers in the world. Newegg formed the brand with the intent to provide high quality products, outstanding value and customer satisfaction as priorities. Today we're going to be testing the Rosewill FORT120, a high end CPU cooler utilising direct touch technology and a tower design. They already have a number of heatsink products in their lineup and it will be interesting to see how this offering stands up against the Thermalright 120, one of the most popular air coolers in enthusiast circles.

Kodak has recently limited its camera offerings to Point-and-Shoot digital cameras, and has presented its products as being easy to use. Their latest offering is the EasyShare Z915, and promises a large optical zoom in a relatively small body. The last Kodak product I used was positive slide film, so I went into this having never used an EasyShare camera before.

Sometimes a video card needs to be just that. A card for video. Many high-end workstation motherboards don't have integrated video, but what good is a computer without a display? The Intel i7 is just the perfect example. A lot of people have the need for quad cores of number-crunching power, but they're not gamers and, appropriately, have no desire to own a beautiful set of GTX 50 millions. (But you'll get there, we'll see to that.

The OCZ Vertex is leaps and bounds better than the original JMicron Solid State Drive. If you're an owner of the first generation drives and noticing your performance and system is starting to fall behind, it is time for an upgrade. I was originally pleased with the JMicron MLC SSD but after a few short weeks of use my notebook started to hang for a few seconds at a time. As OCZ clearly indicated on their packaging, my OCZ Vertex gives me faster access times resulting in a far more stable machine. The 64MB cache has made a world of difference and OCZ didn't sacrifice too much bandwidth for the improved access time. We're still well into the 140MB/s Write and 200MB/s Read. With Win7 just around the corner and the OCZ Vertex already claiming to support the TRIM command, OCZ's Vertex has a very bright future ahead of itself.

The Palit GeForce GTX 260 896MB graphics card is PhysX ready, to give the best performance in new games. The GeForce GTX 260 896MB graphics card is also CUDA ready, which allows for certain types of media software to take the burden off of your CPU and put your graphics card to work. The Palit GTX 260 has 2nd generation NVIDIA architecture to allow for the best performance. The GTX 260 is also compatible with HDMI displays via dongle. With the use of CUDA, the GTX 260 is able to decrease the amount of time it takes to transcode a video, or just take the burden off of the CPU, so you can do other things.

Sapphire has four ranges for most top-end products they offer: standard, Vapor-X, Toxic, and Atomic. While each is different in its own right, for most gamers it is the Toxic design that draws the most attention. Combining the Vapor-X cooling with overclocks seen on the Atomic, the Toxic brand is the most elite air-cooled video card Sapphire offers. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the performance on the Sapphire HD4890 Toxic Vapor-X 11150-01-40R video card against many of the other best graphics accelerator solutions in the price segment. FPS tests compare frame rates between low to high-end video cards, including a pair of CrossFireX Radeon HD 4770's.

A bevy of new desktop processors arrivesThe Tech Report posted a roundup of 26 different types of processors

AMD and Intel have deluged us with new CPUs. The result? An enormous roundup of 26 different types of processors, including five brand-new ones. We've poked, prodded, tested for performance, measured power efficiency, overclocked, and considered the value propositions for CPUs from $87 to $999.

This chassis will particularly appeal to users who demand massive storage capacity in their machines. With room for seven HDDs, the Element S can be easily outfitted into a storage monster. Hell, you can even add a couple of laptop hardies if you want.

There aren't that many companies out there that offer liquid cooling products which you can purchase separately. There's a handful of them. One of them is the German based Alphacool. Recently they introduced a new CPU block called the Alphacool HF 38 Niagara.